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Month: June 2014

Will you be in the Twin Cities Wednesday evening, just waiting for CONvergence and SkepchickCon to start? Come on down to the Bryant-Lake Bowl for Quiz-O-Tron. Rebecca Watson explains.

You know you’ve got a good show going when the professional birder on stage continually threatens to steal the show from the professional comedians. Quiz-O-Tron will be a great show, and the BLB is a great place to grab a meal. Plus, if all that’s not enough to pull you into the theater, proceeds from the show help pay to bring scientists and skeptics into town for SkepchickCon.

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Due to the holiday weekend and the timing of SkepchickCon, Mock the Movie is postponed until the second Wednesday this month. Catch us next week when we offer you a little Rowdy Roddy Piper. That’s worth waiting for, right?

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I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Your “Jokes” About Sexist Harassment–“If you want me to keep writing, STOP doing this weird half-gloating half-bemoaning thing about how I’m going to get soooooo much harassment for what I just wrote, fuck those sexist assholes, amirite?”

Why Tech Companies Don’t Understand Online Abuse–“I understand why these tech dudes don’t get it, since they’ve probably never had to wonder, “How do I warn my friends and followers about this abusive person while minimizing the risk of said person turning on me and threatening me with rape and death?'”

Is Fat Our Friend?–“They intended to encourage U.S. residents to eat more fruits and vegetables. What they accomplished, instead, was a vast expansion of the market for simple starch-based carbs, and for starch-based sweeteners that took the place of fat in industrial food production.”

Choosing Our Targets for #TwitterTheocracy–“We’re glad that Twitter has changed its mind on these individual accounts and tweets, but the repressive source of that censorship still very much exists, and that’s where we’re putting our focus.”

Stephanie Kwolek, Chemist Who Created Kevlar, Dies At 90–“‘She found an opportunity at DuPont because many men were in the military at the time,’ reports the Wilmington News Journal. Kwolek continued to flourish there long after World War II ended, doing extensive work on polymers.”

Two-Parent Households Can Be Lethal–“Mental health professionals, law enforcement officials, judges and members of the clergy often showed greater concern for the maintenance of a two-parent family than for the safety of the mother and her children.”

Will There Be a Shi’a-Sunni War in the Middle East? Not Likely–“The success of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS–Also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL) in capturing large territories in Syria and Northern Iraq, and now threatening Baghdad, has raised once again the specter of a Sunni-Shi’a war in the Middle East. Such a scenario is possible, but unlikely.

The walls erected by traditional media–“Is it really the case that even with clear editorial policies in place a school superintendent cannot engage in journalism about education; that a physicist cannot run a recognize publication about physics; and that a blog run by a practicing physician is inherently not ‘editorially independent’?”

For those of you not yet in the loop, on Tuesday, Dawkins suggested that “Shakespeare Schubert Darwin Einstein” should be the people chosen to represent humanity to hypothetical alien intelligences. At the time, he did suggest that other people would have other opinions and even suggested he would be interested in hearing them. On Thursday, however, when someone tweeted at him that they didn’t want humanity represented by “only old white guys”, Dawkins turned around and asked “”Old white guys”? Who then would you choose as a better poet than Shakespeare, better scientist than Einstein . . . etc ?”

After Dawkins moved his recommendations up the ladder from personal choices to “the best”, the following conversation occurred.

There was an incident when I was young and cross and fed up with parental expectations. My sister, who is the Good One, has gold and gems fall from her lips, and since I could not be her, I had to go a different way.

So I got frogs. It happens.

“You’ll grow into it,” the fairy godmother said. “Some curses have cloth-of-gold linings.” She considered this, and her finger drifted to her lower lip, the way it did when she was forgetting things. “Mind you, some curses just grind you down and leave you broken. Some blessings do that too, though. Hmm. What was I saying?”

I spent a lot of time not talking. I got a slate and wrote things down. It was hard at first, but I hated to drop the frogs in the middle of the road. They got hit by cars, or dried out, miles away from their damp little homes.

Toads were easier. Toads are tough. After awhile, I learned to feel when a word was a toad and not a frog. I could roll the word around on my tongue and get the flavor before I spoke it. Toad words were drier. Desiccated is a toad word. So is crisp and crisis and obligation. So are elegant and matchstick.

Frog words were a bit more varied. Murky. Purple. Swinging. Jazz.

I practiced in the field behind the house, speaking words over and over, sending small creatures hopping into the evening. I learned to speak some words as either toads or frogs. It’s all in the delivery.

Love is a frog word, if spoken earnestly, and a toad word if spoken sarcastically. Frogs are not good at sarcasm.

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How many bad arguments are there for the existence of god(s)? Well, there are probably a lot more than 39, but that’s the number that Minnesota Atheists past president August Berkshire addresses in his latest publication. Inspired by his interactions with students over the years he’s been a guest lecturer on atheism and humanism, he’s been building a list of common lay apologetics and their counters. These are just a few of the topics he covers:

God Is Intangible, Like Love

The Argument from Motion

The Argument from Embarrassment

Free Will

This Sunday, he joins us in the studio to talk about the kinds of bad arguments people make and the ways that they’re flawed.

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I’m not sure why everyone is so excited to get their CONvergence/SkepchickCon schedules up. I mean, the con is a whole week away! (Eek, it’s only a week away!) (Yay, only one more week to CONvergence!)

All right. Here’s where I can be found over the Fourth of July weekend:

When has science hurt people in reality and what has that taught us about how science should be practiced? We’ll discuss everything from the Tuskegee experiments and Henrietta Lacks to continuing issues like surgery on intersex babies. Panelists: Stephanie Zvan (mod), Caleph Wilson, PZ Myers, Mary Brock, Debbie Goddard

Fred Saberhagen wrote a series of books from Dracula’s point of view, including The Dracula Tape, Old Friend of the Family, and more. We’ll discuss his work, particularly the more complicated moral portrayal of vampires. Panelists: Paul Weimer, Stephanie Zvan

Criticism and even rage blazing across social media has proven remarkably effective in getting complaints heard, but what are the downsides? How do we maintain communities when anger and volume get things done? Panelists: Miri Mogilevsky, Jason Thibeault, Beth Voigt, Stephanie Zvan, Debbie Goddard

Sunday, July 6

I’m starting Sunday morning at 9 a.m. by interviewing Dr. Rubidium for Atheists Talk radio about, among other things, using pop culture to communicate science.

You’ve just heard or read about an amazing scientific claim. Where do you go to start vetting the claim or the study, especially if you’re not a scientist? What are the signs that it might be hyped, misleading, or false? Panelists: Caleph Wilson (mod), Siouxsie Wiles, Stephanie Zvan, Shawn Otto, Heina Dadabhoy

Men are from Sirius; women are from the Pleiades. Am I right? Let’s talk about all that research on sex and racial differences and what it means in day-to-day life. Is there any significance beyond the statistical? Panelists: Will Robertson, Stephanie Zvan, Betsy Lundsten, Desiree Schell (mod)

When more and more news outlets are dropping their dedicated science staff, what happens to the quality of the news coverage? How much of what we read is just plain wrong, and what can we do about it? Panelists: Rob Callahan, Shawn Otto, Debbie Goddard, Stephanie Zvan

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This was originally posted in June 2008. I still feel a bit of this, even though my new job is an object lesson in what a good generalist can accomplish. I can’t be the only person who feels this way, can I?

I am not a specialist. I’m a generalist and a good one. My primary skill is learning. I break unfamiliar tasks down quickly and optimize and mechanize processes. I read material aimed beyond my knowledge because I can mostly fill in background from what’s implied as well as what’s stated, and I know how to spot what I’m missing and have to look up. I synthesize and project ridiculously well. Drop me into unfamiliar chaos, and I start tidying, building a coherent whole from the scattered pieces, even while my hindbrain screams in panic that the task is impossible. It’s just what I do.

But oh, I must admit to a bit of the generalist’s envy of specialists. I sit down with someone who knows their field inside and out and I feel like an unschooled child. Following along suddenly seems like faking it. Not having that kind of command of anything, I feel just a wee bit useless.

I could make myself feel better by changing the subject, talking about things I do know, where the specialist would be the one having to follow. I don’t lack options for other topics. But I never do it. The generalist in me can’t let these opportunities pass (knowledge, resources, ooh!), no matter how uncomfortable they are.

I try to tell myself I shouldn’t be uncomfortable. I remind myself, in between moments of paying very close attention, of everything I said above. Under the envy, I do know my strengths and that they’re not inconsiderable and that they’re not really compatible with the dedication being a specialist requires. I know I’m a very good generalist.

Don’t want to run a panel but you still have ideas about what you want to see? That’s okay too. While proposals that come with a moderator and participants baked in save us time and energy and are viewed with gratitude, your con runners are happy to do some recruiting for topics you particularly want to see. Continue reading “Tell Us What You Want to See at FtBCon3”→

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I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

Repeat After Me–“As I said, I’ve been listening to Christian radio. I found it offensive–not because of my atheism, but because of my aesthetic commitment to proper rhyming verse.”

And the mansplainer brigade rushes in–“Do you think that it is inherently rude for women to point out to men that their romantic/ sexual advances are unwanted, and that it’s sexist to focus their attention to women entirely on our appearance?”

Women Remember: A Roundtable Interview–“I guess we caused some real destruction to the male notion that SF, like a good deal else, was theirs, all theirs, and only theirs. But I wonder if that notion is in fact destructible.”

Video Games Need More Than Damsels and Dames–“But to understand business survival in the face of moral decisions is not to immediately accede to the business. We are still allowed to question why businesses make decisions that appear wrong, from a moral or social perspective. “

Vasectomies Should Not Be Used as Punishment–“While it may not seem that forcing women to have children has all that much in common with trying to force a man not to have children, both are rooted in this unsavory ideal that the basic right to bodily autonomy should be abandoned in the face of other people’s disapproval of your sexual choices.”

Editor’s note: Michael Gerson replaces George Will–“The change has been under consideration for several months, but a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier.”

Why You Need to Close Your Open Offices Now–“Open offices were an extreme solution to begin with, and the data is in, folks: they don’t work. So cut your losses and close your offices before your embattled employees find a company that will.”

On Valuing Women and Others – thoughts in progress–“We may not read books or stories or watch movies or plays or view art by other women, LGBT or Q people, people of color, anyone different from ourselves. Or we may read those stories or see that art once in a blue moon but we do not celebrate those works, those voices.”

I swear–“Those rules about who swears and when? I find them kind of weird and interesting.”

Stop Being So Sensitive, Penn Jillette.–“It’s rare to see someone shout, “Be Civil!” at the privileged majority (and certainly not at atheist heroes that major organizations like American Atheists want to cozy up to).”

Coverage of Women on SFF Blogs (2013)–“Our data for this year doesn’t support our thesis quite as strongly as in previous years, but the data still shows that unfortunately, women writers are not being reviewed at the same rate as men.”

Welcome to griefbeyondbelief.org…–“You may just need a resource, or something to listen to or read. Or you may want to stay a while. It’s up to you how you use this space.”

Wis. Gov. Scott Walker Accused Of Illegal Fundraising–“‘The scope of the criminal scheme under investigation is expansive,’ lead investigator Francis Schmitz wrote in the Dec. 9 court filing. ‘It includes criminal violations of multiple elections laws’ including filing false campaign reports, he wrote, according to the AP.”

A Fresh Cry Of Pain: Fat-Shaming In Science–“She told me that her team did a lot of collaborative work in this lab, and she didn’t need someone who was going to ‘eat more than their fair share of the pizza, if you know what I mean.'”

State finds illegal sterilizations of female inmates–“Of the 144 tubal ligations performed on inmates from fiscal years 2005-06 to 2012-13, auditors found, more than a quarter were done without lawful consent, according to the report by State Auditor Elaine Howle.”